How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Cadence]

I guess that takes care of the threads on the new PHB art. I'm guessing few on here have made art for a game book before. And also dismisses almost all criticism of senators and presidents.

Going further, if one isn't supposed to critique GMing techniques unless they have GM'd, does that give a lot of cover fire to folks suspected of being railroad conductors? And a free pass to those DMs who are in situation of being the only DM around?

 

[pemerton]

How so?

I threw in the cigarette smell as something they could look into further if they wanted to. There's no expectation that they will; indeed it's quite possible the smoke-smell piece will get overlooked or unheard in the rest of the description, and that's fine too. But if they do want to do anything with that element, it's there and they've been made aware of it.

You earlier indicated I should only describe the man (and the flies) as he's what the players/PCs are most likely to want to interact with and could well be the reason they are there at all. What that does is point them directly at the man and in effect makes everything else in or about the room irrelevant.

What I want to do instead is give them multiple elements - the man, the window, the hole in the wall, the smoke, the bottles, etc. - and let them choose which to interact with; and even though it's still highly likely they'll beeline to the man and mostly ignore everything else, they have other options. Also, if it turns out that any of those other elements happens to be relevant now or later e.g. there's someone listening on the other side of the hole or beneath the open window, they can't later say I never mentioned that element.

You say "makes everything else in the room irrelevant". But why would that be? I mean, suppose I describe the room as per my first alternative above: You open the door, into a poorly furnished office. There's a man sitting, slumped, in the simple wooden chair. Flies are hovering about and above him. You can't see his face. He looks like he's dead.

A player might ask "What do I smell?" Whatever the answer given, we now have something potentially relevant. Or might ask "Is the window open?" Now the window is relevant. Or might state "I go to the window! What do I see?" Again, now the window is relevant.

A crisper description doesn't preclude the players asking questions, any more than you description does. And we've already established that your description nevertheless requires questions, in the sense that the players must ask questions to learn about the flies, or the absence of butts in the bottles, or the presence of bottle caps.

What your description does do is make something salient other than the question of the identify of the man, and his status as alive or dead - namely, the hole in the wall, the smell of smoke, etc. This is where the tension lies - you say that you do not want to create expectations or lead the players, but in fact you are doing exactly those things, by choosing to foreground certain facts that - from the players' point of view - were hitherto not of significance to them.

If you, or any other GM, wants to introduce "hooks" into the fiction to try and catch the players' interest, well that's your prerogative. But it seems odd to deny that that's what you're doing!

Going further, if one isn't supposed to critique GMing techniques unless they have GM'd, does that give a lot of cover fire to folks suspected of being railroad conductors? And a free pass to those DMs who are in situation of being the only DM around?

Before one gets to the stage of critiquing GMing techniques, there's the stage of identifying them.

For instance, @Lanefan takes himself to be seeding a mystery by not mentioning smoking paraphernalia in the context of his smell of cigarette smoke; but takes himself also to not be doing the same when he fails to mention the caps to the empty bottles, and fails to mention the flies, and fails to mention the open window.

As a GMing technique, how does this work? It requires the players to have some intuition as to what the GM regards as going without saying (and hence not worth following up on - flies, bottle caps) and what the GM regards as saliently absent (and hence worth following up on - smoking paraphernalia). It also requires the players to have the patience and inclination to ask questions that are not connected to action declarations for their PCs. As in, "Do I see any flies?" "Is there an ashtray, or any butts in the empty bottles?" etc. Which are things that the PC would already by able to see, but which the GM has not bothered to describe first go around.

It mixes hooks to "sub-mysteries" in among mere colour. As @Crimson Longinus has posted not far upthread, this in turn risks turning play into a wandering around looking for the hidden action.

That game is certainly not going to have the pace or the pressure of a gumshoe story, despite being - ostensibly - a "gumshoe game".

Have you ever GMed a RPG? curious

Yes, several. I linked you to an account of a session of Wuthering Heights that I GMed. I take it that you didn't click on the link.

 

[Corinnguard]

es, several. I linked you to an account of a session of Wuthering Heights that I GMed. I take it that you didn't click on the link.

I just looked at it right now. What I read about the Wuthering Heights session was okay.

This is RPG is a LARP?

 

[darkbard]

To be honest, I prefer a RPG to be one where the GM and the players are taking turns in the driver's seat. Role-playing is a cooperative act where the GM and the players take turns at developing the story as it unfolds for both of them. Both are creating it as they go. I find this to be true even when the GM is using a pre-made adventure because they get to role-play as the NPCs and the Monsters. And every GM gets to role-play them as they please.

I guess I also prefer RPG adventures where there is a introduction, a connected sequence of cause and effects (otherwise known as the plot), a climax and a conclusion. I don't think I would want to role-play in a RPG where I didn't get the sense that it was headed somewhere definite.

If my first highlighting of your text is representative of what defines the core of your idea of roleplay, I would suggest that it is a very narrow slice of the possibilities of the term, one that might more accurately be described as focusing on cosplay.

My second highlight is to emphasize that, in your own words, what you seem to be interested in as a player is being a participant in a pre-plotted adventure (which, more or less, equates with a railroad). And there's nothing wrong with that! Lots of players enjoy this mode of play! (There's even a term for this, sometimes dismissed by a faction of posters here as jargon, but whatever: participationism.) But this is only one form of roleplaying, as has been pointed out above. Believe it or not, there can be very compelling, immersive games that feel like being a character in an excellent movie or novel without proceeding from this kind of play. Check out this Play-by-Post in which I am a player for a transparent example of a Story Now game that has no pre-scripted plot, climax, or conclusions but where the PCs and NPCs and setting feel vibrant, real, vital, in my opinion: here).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, that is much worse. That's why I like to use the term "rollercoaster" when it is a railroad but the GM is making a good faith effort to make it fun for everyone, and the players opt in.

The one time I pretty much had to run a game in that mode (Scion 1e) I made sure to let everyone know it was right at the start of the campaign.

 

[Corinnguard]

what you seem to be interested in as a player is being a participant in a pre-plotted adventure (which, more or less, equates with a railroad).

As I mentioned up thread to Hawkeyefan, I have been role-playing 5e for almost three years now, and have role-played in two adventures. Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus (6/21 to 12/22) and Tyranny of Dragons (1/23 to present). I haven't had the opportunity to role-play in a homebrewed adventure.

My role-playing experience in both adventures has been more like being on a roller-coaster than a railroad. My party and I have happily had our share of ups and downs in both.

 

[thefutilist]

And how would you run an adventure if you were the GM?

If you’re interested in the various ways to make story, here’s a very brief overview., maybe so brief it won’t make a lot of sense.

Plot centric trad. This is the type of advice you find in Vampire the Masquerade, a lot of adventure supplements, 2nd edition D&D and so on. It’s often conflated with the ‘trad’ way to play. How the GM preps and the characters the players created aren’t linked at all. This was, and maybe still is, the most popular form of story centric play. It’s also the only type of story centric play that you can use adventure models for.

Water-slide trad: This is probably the second most popular trad approach at the moment and I think Matt Mercer and Brendan Lee Mulligan are good examples of it. The GM does prep a story but he does so in response to the characters. In it’s most functional form it doesn’t feel like a rail road because what the characters want to do and how the GM preps are in tune with each other. A lot of what people call neo-trad is in this category.

Intuitive continuity/no-myth: Basically similar to the above but the GM does the prep on the fly in response to what the characters are doing. A lot of story games and trad games are run in this manner. An example I like to use is, a player is playing a Paladin and he’s conflicted about helping the poor vs serving the law. So the GM decides the next scene is a poor urchin who was stealing food, has been captured by the City Watch.

Situation play: You create the initial situation and let it play out by playing the NPC’s as you would play a PC. You scene frame based on what pre-established conflict of interests make sense (basically what both the PC’s and the NPC’s want to do next) and then take into account both time and distance. That’s your next scene.

These categories aren’t necessarily as distinct as I’m making them out to be and often you’ll find one bleeds into another.

They also tend to be game text independent, for the most part. For instance you can play any one of the four styles in pretty much any Trad game you can think of. It’s more about player expectation and how the GM is doing prep or what criteria they use to make things up.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I have been an active player of 5e for almost three years now, and I am currently role-playing in my second 5e adventure. I also have something of a strong interest in EN World's Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition.

Because of RL, I only have the opportunity to role-play 5e with two of my closest friends (one of whom is a GM). We try to role-play 5e every Monday for 2-4 hours.

It sounds like you would make a good GM.

If you are interested in GMing, or even just in how GMing can work, then I’d suggest you check out one of those games I mentioned.

I’ve been GMing for decades, most of it D&D of one form or another. I’ve never read a D&D publication with advice that’s anywhere near as specific, clear, and concise as Apocalypse World. It’s an eye opening book.

 

[Lanefan]

You say "makes everything else in the room irrelevant". But why would that be? I mean, suppose I describe the room as per my first alternative above: You open the door, into a poorly furnished office. There's a man sitting, slumped, in the simple wooden chair. Flies are hovering about and above him. You can't see his face. He looks like he's dead.

A player might ask "What do I smell?" Whatever the answer given, we now have something potentially relevant. Or might ask "Is the window open?" Now the window is relevant. Or might state "I go to the window! What do I see?" Again, now the window is relevant.

Where my longer description brought those things into play a lot more proactively, and thus skipped that part of the ask-questions phase in favour of either a) diving in and interacting with what's already been described (most likely, the man) or b) asking more detailed questions about one or more elements already mentioned.

A crisper description doesn't preclude the players asking questions, any more than you description does. And we've already established that your description nevertheless requires questions, in the sense that the players must ask questions to learn about the flies, or the absence of butts in the bottles, or the presence of bottle caps.

If the players want to get into minutae then yes, questions are required. But things that are fairly obvious on first glance (the window, the smell, the hole in the wall, the passed-out man, etc.) should be described on the first pass.

What your description does do is make something salient other than the question of the identify of the man, and his status as alive or dead - namely, the hole in the wall, the smell of smoke, etc. This is where the tension lies - you say that you do not want to create expectations or lead the players, but in fact you are doing exactly those things, by choosing to foreground certain facts that - from the players' point of view - were hitherto not of significance to them.

That's where we differ, I think: just because I describe something doesn't mean I'm necessarily trying to make it salient or somehow indicate the players are supposed to interact with it. I describe it neutrally as a scene-set (and, of course, my descriptions aren't always going to be perfect) and let them decide the salient bits - whether correctly or not, doesn't matter - by what they choose to interact with.

Describing more elements also gives the players (both in and out of character) more to think about. If I only describe the man and the flies, they're 100% going to beeline for the man and ignore everything else. If however I also describe the hole in the wall, now they've got something else to consider and think (or worry) about. Noting the presence of the bottles might lead them to think about what this guy was drinking, and-or how much. Describing the window with sunlight streaming in is just a simple way for all of us not to have to worry about the room's lighting and-or how well they can see in there; and obviously if the PCs arrive at night this narration changes considerably.

And the smell gives various clues and raises various questions. For example, that they can smell sweat implies that either the man has been here a while or (along with the unexplained cigarette smoke) that others may have been here not too long ago.

If I describe just the man, that seems considerably more "leading" than if I describe several other elements as well.

If you, or any other GM, wants to introduce "hooks" into the fiction to try and catch the players' interest, well that's your prerogative. But it seems odd to deny that that's what you're doing!

What you call hooks I might call red herrings, but why would I deny introducing them? The hypothetical game here is about investigation, suspicion, and detective work; sub-mysteries and unanswered questions would seem to be par for the course.

For instance, @Lanefan takes himself to be seeding a mystery by not mentioning smoking paraphernalia in the context of his smell of cigarette smoke; but takes himself also to not be doing the same when he fails to mention the caps to the empty bottles, and fails to mention the flies, and fails to mention the open window.

I probably should have mentioned that the window was open in the initial description, yes. Like I said, my descriptions aren't always perfect.

But those bloody flies! They're fairly ubiquitous in places lke this, even more so in the days before bug zappers, and wouldn't be worth a mention unless they were somehow behaving oddly e.g. crawling over the man's face or absent altogether.

It mixes hooks to "sub-mysteries" in among mere colour.

Exactly, and that's the point. It's on them to determine what's pure colour, what might be or become relevant, and what is certainly relevant.

As @Crimson Longinus has posted not far upthread, this in turn risks turning play into a wandering around looking for the hidden action.

Which is in my view a clear and obvious hazard of investigative-style play; that either a) the GM has to hand-feed the clues to the players and risk leading them by the nose or b) they spend a lot of time getting frustrated by red herrings and false leads (some of which could be generated by their fixating on some irrelevant element while ignoring the real mystery).

For me, a) is off the table and so b) it is. Prepare to be frustrated.

 

[Thomas Shey]

For me, a) is off the table and so b) it is. Prepare to be frustrated.

Or in my case, c) find something better to do with my time. I'm not that fond of investigative games at the best of times, if someone is going to cheerfully watch the group run in circles, I'll take a pass, thanks.